word formation

Isaac Ilyich Levitan was born into a poor but educated family. His family encouraged his artistic talents and he was enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting. His mother died when he was fifteen and two years later his father also died leaving him homeless. It was one of his teachers who took him on as an apprentice to provide some monetary aid. At the age of 17, Isaac had experienced the sorrows of abject poverty and this reflected in his paintings. Isaac Levitan is now regarded as one of Russia’s most influential landscape artists. His choice of subject was dictated by mood, a central category in his personal aesthetics. He is thus credited for being the founder of what has been called the “mood landscape”. Levitan created landscapes which reflect the smallness of mankind next to the vastness of heaven. All of his work is marked with the theme of eternity, even in its smallest, most modest manifestation.